Ghoulardi's kid

Speaking of TV horror hosts (as we were last week with Zacherley), Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride, is a wonderful book about Ernie Anderson's antics as late-night host Ghoulardi on  Cleveland's Channel 8 (WJW) from 1963 to 1966. He is one of the most widely and fondly remembered of the regional horror hosts. And one of the most influential.

As Tom Feran and R.D. Heldenfels wrote in this 1997 book, WJW and Anderson "created an icon of popular culture whose legacy, decades later, would defy the disposable standards of modern media. Television was growing, still rough around the edges, into the common thread of community consciousness. Ghoulardi would first conquer it, amassing an audience of a size unimaginable today; and then transcend it, surviving in memories, attitudes, and language of a generation who would carry him to even wider attention."

It's a terrific book and one I highly recommend. And it comes with a fun coda. This passage appears on the final two pages of the book:

"Ernie's son Paul, an up-and-coming movie director, is stirring up trouble as eagerly as his father did. Paul's first movie, Hard Eight, came and went, but his second feature, Boogie Nights, was causing comment months before it was released. A look at the people working in and around the pornographic movie business in the '70s, the movie was the subject of eyebrow-raising stories about its subject, its male frontal nudity, and its two-and-a half-to-three-hour length. ... Through the efforts of the twenty-six-year-old auteur, it also boasted a cast of solid players like Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy. 'The worst thing you can do is be wishy-washy,' Paul said of moviemaking. His old man seems to have lived his whole life by the code, and Paul acknowledged 'I definitely inherited that trait.' As Boogie Nights sat on the verge of national release, Paul said he was next considering making a film about his dad — one that would focus especially on his years as Ghoulardi. He already had paid tribute to his father by naming his production firm The Ghoulardi Film Company."

Indeed, filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is the son of Ghoulardi — Ernie Anderson.

Anderson hasn't made a movie specifically about Ghoulardi yet, but his most recent film, One Battle After Another, is up for 13 Oscars this coming weekend. To which Ghoulardi might exclaim, “Stay sick, knif!”

Feral cats, March 2026

Put it in the Louvre. That's Mamacita on the right. In the center is her older son Creamsicle 

and on the left is her younger son Splash. 

Cats are a primary reason I don't write 10 blog posts a week. In addition to taking care of the indoor cats, we have "regulars" in the neighborhood feral community who get from us the food and water they need to subsist in the harsh desert climate. (I realize that I repeat myself when it comes to these cat posts, but c'est la vie.)

Here's the current March 2026 rundown on the feral/community kitties:

1. The matriarch is Mamacita and we've known her for more than four years, since she was a kitten. There a great picture of her at the bottom of this May 2025 post. 

2. She's often seen with her older son Creamsicle, who is the cat we see most often. He hangs around in the mornings, sits in the firepit when he's trying to be sneaky and catch a bird and looks for shade on hot afternoons. 

3. Splash is a black-and-white tuxedo cat and is Creamsicle's younger brother. The two brothers often come for breakfast together in the mornings. Splash, as I'm sure I've noted before, got his name because, when he was a kitten, he fell into the pool and did tiny paddles all the way to safety before I could even get into the water to save him, which I would have.

4. Blue-eyed Gumball has been coming around for almost two years. I think he was an abandoned or lost pet. He often spends the entire day sleeping in a chair underneath the patio roof. Temptations are his favorite food, and I usually have to distract him with Temptations and a stern look when I'm feeding other cats, because he likes to chase them.

5. Meowmix starting visiting around the same time as Gumball, and the two of them get along relatively well together, especially given that they're both tomcats, so I wonder sometimes if they were essentially abandoned together. Meowmix is much more mellow and always runs off after he's finished eating. He's a sweetheart and is the only feral cat, currently, that lets me pet them.

6. Marmalade first started visiting in December, as I noted in the Christmas post, and he's yet another tomcat. And yet another cat that I suspect may have been abandoned or lost. He's extremely not neutered and loves to spray, spray, spray. He has designs on Mamacita, because he's incapable of understanding that she's spayed. I have great hopes that we can TNR at least two of Marmalade, Gumball and Meowmix this month, before the summer weather really kicks. Of course we want to get all three of them neutered, eventually, but these things take time, patience and energy. Marmalade has lost weight since December, which further reinforces the notion that he may not have always been an outdoor cat and is now fending for himself. And so I worry about him, especially, with his first summer coming. Here are two photos of Marmalade in our front window well.

7. And our newest and final semi-regular is Yinzer (named by Joan). I'm fairly sure it's a male. He may be the youngest of the cats, and once again, grrrr, I think there's a decent chance that he was abandoned/lost. He started coming by tentatively and then running off as soon as I went outside. Then he would meow at the back door a couple times before scooting off. Now he stays and eats some food some mornings, which makes me happy. Here he is...

* * *

We had some special cat visitors at the beginning of the year. A new-to-us pregnant female began coming nightly shortly after dark for food and especially for cheese. It got to the point where she would scoot under the table and wait while I put food down for her, but otherwise she was extremely skittish, as a pregnant kitty should be. We watched her get really big as she came for a few weeks and then, unsurprisingly, she stopped coming. I suspect we were her secondary/supplementary food source during pregnancy, so I'm honestly not sure if/when we'll see her again if she lives a fair distance away. We'll worry for her and her kittens and be here to help if they ever return. We named her Daisy and, yes, she has a heck of a R.B.F. Life in the desert is tough for the mama cats.

And Daisy came with a surprise! On three nights and three nights only, she was accompanied by a male tomcat that we realized was the long-lost Fjord Nubbins. Fjord is a son of Mamacita and is Creamsicle's brother from the same litter. He disappeared a couple years ago, before we could TNR him, and we had just assumed the worst. But it appears that he's thriving. In my head canon, he's Daisy's mate and, when she was pregnant and needed food, he remembered this place and led her here, accompanying her a few times to say hello. I could be completely wrong, but I like that story and I'm sticking with it. I could only get snapshots of Fjord, and his very recognizable face, through the window. Here they are: 

Meanwhile, we still have occasional skunks but I can't tell who's who anymore after naming most of them last year. Given the time of year, I suspect that we might not be far from the time when we start seeing some tiny, adorable baby skunks. 

We also seem to have overnight raccoon(s), given the levels of mayhem I find sometimes in the morning. I'm glad we're helping them, but they're hitting the cat food budget pretty hard. (I could just stop leaving out food overnight, but I always imagine that the most skittish and vulnerable cats, ones I never see, depend upon it, so I'll keep doing it.) 

If you're interested in helping in a small way to feed the feral kitties and skunks, my Redbubble page offers a lot of postcards of these cats (both the indoor pets and the ferals) posing in adorable fashion.

Splash pages from 1937 yearbook

Quickie post as I keep working to resimplify. This is a two-page layout near the front of the 1937 yearbook for Hammond High School in Hammond, Indiana. That's the year my grandmother, then Helen Chandler Adams (1919-2003), would have graduated from the school. But I guess maybe the family had moved back eastward by then, because she's not in the yearbook.* It's an interesting snapshot of teenage life in the Midwest as the world was slipping toward all-out war. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

***

A few hours later ... addendum

*As I continued sorting and pruning family ephemera today, I answered this question by coming across Helen's resume in an envelope of family ephemera. This will be very handy for future posts. It clearly states that she graduated from Wilmington Friends School in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1937. What's not clear is precisely what year the family moved away from Hammond, but I guess we can assume it was sometime between 1934 and 1936. And I assume I'll come across clarity on that with different ephemera at some point.

Also, I absolutely should have remembered Wilmington Friends School as being part of the equation, given, among other things, this 2017 post and this 2018 post.

Welcome to the California Zephyr

This piece of ephemera is about the size of an index card and greets passengers arriving on the California Zephyr.

The California Zephyr has a long, storied and extremely complicated history, and if you're interested in that, Wikipedia and many a railroad buff have you covered. This card is from the iteration of the Zephyr train service that operated from 1949 to 1970. It was operated by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Denver & Rio Grande Western and Western Pacific railroads, as noted at the bottom of this card. It was one of the longest train trips in the country, running between Oakland, California, and Chicago, Illinois. I strongly suspect that my great-grandmother, Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988), rode the California Zephyr in the 1950s or early 1960s. 

The card notes: 

"Dinner in the dining car is on a reservation basis so as to avoid standing in line. Advance selection of dining hour by each passenger should provide reasonable assurance that a seat will be available at the appointed time. The Zephyrette will pass through the train each afternoon to see about your reservations for dinner that same evening. We earnestly request your cooperation by being in the dining car at the selected time. No reservations are necessary for breakfast or lunch in the dining car or for any meal service in the buffet car."

Yes, "Zephyrette" was a thing. In fact, the Zephyrettes were famous enough to have their own Wikipedia page. It notes that a Zephyrette was a hostess on the California Zephyr between 1949 and 1970. It further states: "To qualify, a prospective Zephyrette had to fulfill a variety of criteria, from being single and either a college graduate or a registered nurse to being between 24 and 28 years old and between 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) and 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) tall. Once employed, Zephyrettes were expected to conduct themselves with 'dignity and poise' and also refrain from smoking or drinking while in uniform, among other requirements. Somewhat akin to an air line stewardess, the roles played by a Zephyrette were many, from hostess and tour guide to first aid responder and babysitter."

In addition to Wikipedia, there's an in-depth webpage on the Zephyrettes here. It adds this fun tidbit: "The Zephyrette was expected to pass through the train every couple of hours, checking on the passengers. If there were letters or postcards to be mailed, she would be happy to take care of them. If a passenger needed some item that wasn't available onboard the train, the Zephyrette would rush out to a local store during a station stop. (One Zephyrette took the shopping thing a bit too far, more than once spending too much time at the newsstand, and had to be put into a cab in Denver, rushing off to catch up with the train that had already left.)"

***

Today, Amtrak's iteration of the California Zephyr runs from San Francisco to Chicago, taking a little over 51 hours. As best as I can ascertain from Amtrak's confusing booking website, a one-way trip on the California Zephyr would cost, at minimum, $300 for coach. For some privacy and a place to sleep, the starting minimum would be near $1,000.

I've always imagined that I would enjoy traveling long distances by train, certainly more than I would enjoy traveling by airplane, boat or blimp. The California Zephyr sounds enjoyable and incredibly scenic, but I have no reason to be in San Francisco or Chicago, so I'm not sure what the point would be. I believe, unless I'm forgetting something, that the farthest I've ever traveled by train is from Philadelphia to Manhattan, which I've done numerous times. Basically a commuter-level trip. It would be great fun to take one of those long train rides across Europe and/or Asia, like the trips you see in the movies. Especially Horror Express. Because who wouldn't want to traverse the the 5,800 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas? (Of course, I'm completely setting aside 100% of complicating geopolitics and wars at this point, which would make such a trip impossible, because I need a momentary mental health break.)

Zacherley's 1960 Transylvania passport for fan club members

This night of a nearly full moon seems like an appropriate one for this post about a parody passport that TV horror host John Zacherle (1918-2016) made available to members of his fan club in 1960. 

Zacherle got his start as host of Philadelphia WCAU-TV's Shock Theater in 1957 (playing a host named "Roland") and after a year or so moved to New York's WABC-TV for Zacherley at Large (they added the Y to the end of his name, and it kind of stuck).

According to an article on Zacherley.com (yes, he still has a fan website): "Zacherley was aggressively merchandised. One of the most fondly remembered souvenirs from that era was the 'Transylvanian Passport' which was available by sending two labels from Strawberry Cocoa Marsh Syrup to the manufacturer." Indeed, the back of my passport states "PRINTED IN THE MOONLIGHT BY COCOA MARSHMEN IN TRANSYLVANIA."

It's most fun on the inside, though. The text begins: "The undersigned CREATURE is hereby granted entrance to the SOVEREIGN STATE OR [sic?] TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE YEAR 1960; the year of the FRANKSTEIN JUBILEE."

The passport holder could check a box to classify themself as a He-Wolf, She-Wolf, Vampire, Mummy, Ghoul and/or Monster.

Then there's a spot to check boxes if the holder has been inoculated for Werewolf Fever, Moon-fright, Coffinitis, Sunrayphilia, Banana Blight, Fur Fullout, Egyptian Itch, Chronic Fangosis and/or Embalmer's Rash.

The "Restrictions" are described as follows: "This PASSPORT is issued by the AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE with the understanding and condition that the BEARER CREATURE will travel only during the hours of DARKNESS and will do no EXCAVATING IN THE STATE GRAVEYARDS after visiting hours. WOLF-CALLING is restricted to nights of the FULL MOON."

The ambassador-at-large is, of course, Zacherley, whose photo and signature appear at the bottom.

There are quite a few books and magazines filled with information about Zacherley. If you're interested in horror hosts in general, a good place to start is Elena M. Watson's Television Horror Movie Hosts: 68 Vampires, Mad Scientists and Other Denizens of the Late-Night Airwaves Examined and Interviewed.

Please share any memories you have of Zacherley (or other horror hosts) in the comments section. I'd love to hear them! 

 

1949 silhouette postcards from Ocean City, N.J.

Continuing with the theme of posting about some items I came across during the sorting and decluttering of family ephemera earlier this year, here are some 1949 postcards labeled "Silhouette by Greenberg" from Ocean City, New Jersey.

I'm mostly sure I know who these folks are, with one tricky one. Clockwise from the top left, we start with the tricky one. It's either my grandmother Helen or my great-grandmother Greta. I'd lean toward it being Helen. Then comes my great-grandfather Howard, followed by Mom, who would be about 18 months old if this was created in the summer of 1949. Finally, that's Mom's brother, Charles, who is slightly older.

Greenberg was in business for a good while, as I've seen eBay listings for similar silhouette postcards from as early as 1939. It's a good bet the business was located on or near the Ocean City Boardwalk. Greenberg was far from the only outfit making silhouette postcards in the United States in the middle of the 20th century. I'm guessing some popular tourist spots had a dozen or more vendors.

Ellie McCrackin, working for the website Postcard History, wrote this interesting history of silhouettes and the Wikipedia page goes into even more depth.

Semi-related posts

• Saturday's postcard: New Jersey trolley line in 1907
• 10 postcards showing Atlantic City as you've probably never seen it
• Partial mystery photo: Three women in Atlantic City, New Jersey
• Did you enjoy your weekend down the Jersey Shore?
• Two of my great-grandmother's nieces in Atlantic City in 1939

Book cover: Ida Chittum's "Tales of Terror" (1975)

• Title: Tales of Terror
• 
  Author: Ida Chittum (1918-2002). According to her profile page on IllinoisAuthors.com, "Ida Chittum was educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse. She was a prolific reader and advocate of literacy. Her love for all living things as well as her warm sense of humor are evident in her many published children's books." She had a talking mynah named Poo Bah and was a friend to stray animals. Her other books included A Nutty Business, Clabber Biscuits, The Empty Grave, Farmer Hoo and the Baboons, The Cat's Pajamas, The Ghost Boy of El Toro, The Hermit Boy, and The Secrets of Madam Renee. (Some of them appear to be quite rare, though, on the used market.) In an article by Mardy Fones that was published in the Oct. 1, 1978, edition of the Decatur Sunday Herald and Review, Chittum explains that she used the front of a brown envelope to rough out chapters and then stored the completed chapters inside, annotated with brightly colored corrections and notes to herself. There are a website and a Facebook page devoted to Chittum's legacy.
• Illustrator: Franz Altschuler (1923-2009)
• Book dimensions: 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
• Provenance: My copy was previously shelved in the Edmeston Free Library in Edmeston, New York. (The library is inside a gorgeous old building.) Stamps say it was checked out various times between 1980 and 1992.
• Publisher: Rand McNally & Company.
• Series: Rand McNally published Tales of Terror alongside a few other truly spooky books for children in the mid 1970s. The other volumes include Monsters Tales and Horror Tales (both of which I have and both of which are psychedelic collections edited by Roger Elwood) and Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures.
• Publication date: 1975
• Pages: 124
• Format: Hardcover
• Original price: I can't confirm. I saw one reference to $4.95, but that seems a little low, by at least a couple dollars, for a hardcover in 1975.
• List of stories: The House the Dovers Didn't Move Into; Vision of Roses; Uncle Ned Kunkle; The Twins; The Snipe Hunt; The Yellow Cat; Giant; The Feather Reader; The Woman Who Turned to Paper; Sod Miller's Money; Print on the Window; The Haunted Well; The Special Gift; Bring Back My Teeth; The Lovers; the Cruel Girl; The Twisting Wind; and Courtland Wethers and the Pit.
• Excerpt from Ida Chittum's introduction: "These stories of the hills are taken from my childhood in the Ozark mountains, those scenic hills in the south central part of the United States that are now, for the most part, national forests and wildlife conservation areas. There, every visitor was a storyteller — a source of mystery. Having no books I read the folks who came calling of a Sunday afternoon. The hills were fertile grounds for listeners. These are accounts of a passing way of life, stories of a people who lived out their lives never seeing the outside world or expecting to, any more than one sees into heaven before dying. ... In a sense these stories are mysteries — accounts to wonder on and ponder over. They are tales that need telling before they are lost or forgotten."
• More about this book: In the 1978 Decatur Sunday Herald and Review article, Chittum adds: "We lived on a 40-acre fruit and tea farm — that's persimmons and sassafras sprouts — between St. James and Salem, Mo. When you live with people in the country as I did, you become one of them. They're different than city people. They have more time to be closer to nature in every way. ... Where we lived was five miles from any other house so anyone who came through was as welcome as the sunrise, and they had their stories to tell. ... About 50 percent of these stories I know to be true." (Chittum adds in the article that her "know to be true" stories include a personal encounter with Bigfoot.)
• Excerpt #1: "The strange part, though, was how the footprints of Enoch Schradder, a slender man, were sunk so deep in the earth all the way from the ravine into the timber, as if he were carrying a very heavy burden."
• Excerpt #2: "If Sod every changed his aging bib overalls or took a bath in the cheerful creek which tumbled past his shed, no one would have known it from walking downwind of him."
• Excerpt #3: "Folks around about considered it a marvel the way Ada learned to travel in the vast, timbered area without getting lost. They didn't guess her guide was Geoffrey, and she never said, fearing that the slender thread of joy that ran through their friendship might be broken by those who couldn't understand."
• Rating on Goodreads: 4.82 stars (out of 5). One of the highest ratings I've ever seen.
• Goodreads review: In 2020, Maria wrote: "I read this so often my elementary school librarian refused to let me check it out any more. The illustrations are excellent and greatly contribute to the mood of the book. I treasure the copy I have now."
• Rating on Amazon: 5 stars (out of 5)
• Amazon review excerpt: In 2017, Cynthia wrote: "I first read this book when I was in I think third grade. I feel in love with it instantly. It's still one of my very favorites ever."
• 
  Thoughts and memories from The Haunted Closet blog in 2008: "The beautiful, yet vaguely disturbing illustrations perfectly capture the tone of these tales of drowned children, restless ghosts, magic spells and malevolent wildlife." In 2010, one of that blog's commenters added: "When I was younger I lived in southern Illinois, not far from the Ozarks that Ida Chittum depicted. We checked Tales of Terror out of the library over and over and it stuck with me down the years. The stories were weird and eerie but had the ring of truth to them as well. Some were so sad and beautiful and others were full of dark humor. In our family we often refer to Uncle Ned Kunkel as though he were a relative. And that cover with the faceless people and the illustration that goes with the first story about the house that didn't get moved into are still some of the scariest pictures I can dream up." And in 2012 another blog commenter relayed this personal story: "Mrs. Chittum lived down the road from me, in a very tiny town in Illinois. As memory serves (again, from the mind of a very young child) she lived in an old Victorian house. How fitting! I'll have to check facts with my parents to find out if that is true or not! I remember being scared to death after a visit to her home. She told us a story (could have been from one of her books, I don't know) of the monster that would grab the uncovered feet of kids & drag them off, never to be seen again ... I was never so scared in my little life!! I couldn't peddle my bike fast enough to get home ... and to this day, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered!" (For what it's worth, I cannot sleep with my feet uncovered, either.)
• This book's availability: In great news, a hardcover reprint is available for the very reasonable price of $22.99 on BookBaby and Amazon. One person writes on Amazon: "I had an old falling-apart copy that was the only one I could possibly afford, due to it being such a rare find, so I was very glad to see this book republished in an affordable volume." Ida Chittum would be rightfully thrilled that in 2026, these tales are not being lost or forgotten.

Saturday's postcards

That's Devo, circa 1978, in the middle bottom.

For Postcard Saturday, here are some of my dandy recent arrivals from fellow Postcrossing members. 

• Lisa, a longtime Hello Kitty fan, writes that she just moved to the Vancouver, Washington, area and enjoys "being out in nature appreciating all the wildlife and beauty," including opossums and bald eagles. 
• Tilly, who sent the postcard in the top center, recently moved from right here in Pinal County to Wisconsin and says she misses the warmth. My response: It's 91 here today, and I'm a little weary of the endless warmth we're now going to have until Halloween or later. Tilly works in the antiques business and doesn't like cold pizza.
• Júlia in Slovakia writes that she loves gardening and talking to her parrots.
• Christa in the Philippines writes: "I was very happy to read your profile, especially where you wrote about accountability & transparency. It is also something we experience (or the lack thereof) in the PH. While I did not end up in journalism, I also enjoy writing (and journaling) as a means to practice good English, and to write about interests."
• Carol, who has sent and received more than 17,000 Postcrossing cards, writes: "First, let me say that I know how important good journalists are these days. I have my favorites. I was dismayed to see that a third of the staff of The Washington Post was laid off. But Bezos hasn't been a friend of the people, anyway. My fav book reviewer, Ron Charles, was laid off so I subscribed to his Substack."
• Renee sent the amazing postcard shown in the lower left above. She writes: "Hello and greetings from Iowa. ... I'm a retired librarian, widow since 2021. ... I share my days now with Sissie my 8 y.o. cocker spaniel and build doll houses." She adds in her profile that she likes books (of course!), playing the guitar and listening to metal turned "up to 11"! 

Finally, here's a lovely illustration of King Ghidorah, that meddling three-headed dragon.